Prison Board Asks For Work-release Study

August 16, 1985|By HAL MARCOVITZ, The Morning Call

Bucks County will look toward enlarging its minimum-security work-release program because more and more inmates in the county's correctional facilities have been receiving stiffer sentences from judges.

The county prison board voted yesterday to recommend that the commissioners approve a $13,000 study that would determine how the work- release program could be expanded.

According to Warden Arthur M. Wallenstein, more work-release beds are needed because judges have been handing out tougher sentences to inmates. The longer sentences mean that the population in the county jail is larger than in past years, Wallenstein said, including a higher number of inmates who qualify for work-release.

"Two years ago some inmates might have gotten probation. Now they are getting jail time," Wallenstein said. "We're likely to get more people in the jail and more people qualifying for work-release."

During July there was an average of 339 inmates a day in the newly completed county prison in Doylestown Township. During July 1984 - when the old county prison in Doylestown borough was still in use - there were 280 inmates per day in the jail.

While the population has risen in the prison, the number of inmates in the work-release program has also increased. Work-release inmates, who are permitted to leave confinement during the day for jobs, are held in the minimum-security Bucks County Rehabilitation Center in Doylestown Township.

Wallenstein said the 80-bed center was expanded by 20 beds two years ago when a temporary dormitory, which resembles a mobile home, was erected on the center's grounds. A second 28-bed temporary dormitory was added a few months ago.

Last year the county converted a vacant farmhouse near the rehabilitation center into a 14-bed dormitory for inmates who have to serve short-term drunken drivingsentences.

On weekends, Wallenstein said all facilities comprising the rehabilitation center have been routinely filled to capacity.

"There is no question this study is needed," said Wallenstein.

Officials have said in the past the study may not recommend additional construction at the rehabilitation center. Rather, it might suggest the commissioners seek facilities in other sections of the county closer to where the inmates must go for their jobs.

"There are no preconceptions about this," said the warden.

The prison board recommended that the Vitetta Group, a Philadelphia architectural firm specializing in prison planning, be awarded the contract to perform the three-month study.